Joshua Kushner has discovered something that every venture capitalist eventually learns: some things cannot be financialized without people noticing. The Thrive Capital founder now regrets his involvement in FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s plan to monetize the World Cup by selling off equity stakes — not because the idea was fundamentally absurd, but because the football world had the audacity to object.
This is the investor’s version of buyer’s remorse, except Kushner never actually bought anything. He simply looked at humanity’s most beloved sporting event and thought: what this needs is a leveraged buyout structure. The plan collapsed when it turned out that fans, players, and national federations were not excited about the prospect of a private equity consortium owning pieces of the tournament. Shocking, really.
What makes Kushner’s regret so perfectly instructive is that it mirrors the indecision of investors in every other failing venture — the moment reality pushes back, the conviction evaporates. He would not have gotten involved if he had known how people would react. Translation: I did not do the most basic market research before trying to privatize a 96-year-old institution that billions of people care about.
The absurdity here is not that someone tried to financialize football. The absurdity is that a venture capitalist with Kushner’s profile was surprised that people might have opinions about it. The World Cup is not a Series B startup waiting for Series C funding. It is a global cultural touchstone, and it turns out that treating it like a real estate deal has some friction.
The lesson, apparently, is that even in 2026, not everything can be packaged, sliced, and sold to the highest bidder. Some markets, it seems, still have limits.